What the heck happened to the Party of Lincoln

[Mladen]

OK, so I am in need of a bit history lesson here...

"We are the Party of Lincoln. There is no way that we are allowing the Wicked Witch of Midwest (Phyllis Schlaffley) to enslave us" were the words uttered by Elizabeth Banks playing the Republican feminist Jill Ruckleshaus in "Mrs America". Banks gave some interviews and talked about bipartisanship in issues that most Americans would essentially agree, including E.R.A. That was always my perspective as an European millennial on American politics and that is what brings me here today. 

But somewhere along the road, Republican party went from the Party of Lincoln to the Party of Trump. More than that, the conservative views that many of Trump supporters have are essentially the same views most Putin's proudest party members have in the Motherland. It always seemed Republicans were tougher on USSR and post-Soviet Russia, but I am honestly having a difficult time to see the difference between Republican capitalists in USA of 2020 and the Russian oligarchs sworn to Putin. Has Republican Party became its own worst enemy?

I know I am asking probably too much, so recommendations on books, documentaries etc are most welcome. But, really, how has Republican Party and by extent American politics gone from Lincoln to Trump? And, am I exaggerating that this is the most divisive point USA has had since the dark days of the Civil War? 

Needless to say, thanks for the clarifications and answers. I am really curious  

[Week]

Barry Goldwater.

[DanteGabriel]

I guess the Southern Strategy is a useful place to start, but the coalescing of racists in the Republican Party started well before Goldwater and Nixon made it official policy.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

[sologdin]

the party of lincoln was one part whig minoritarians, one part know nothing nativists, one part protestant revivalists and temperance crusaders, and one part free soil classical liberals. all those items have been in tension in the party for over 150 years. right now the xenophobic asshole wing happens to be dominant and the others are insufficiently principled to object.

[Zorral]

Civil Rights and feminism happened and the racist, sexist white bigots felt their country and their rights were taken away because, you know, some other people's rights alsop were legally recognized, which meant their favorite pastimes such as shooting and rape were curtailed -- LEGALLY, by the federal government. This CANNOT be allowed.

[OldGimletEye]

4 hours ago, Week said:

Barry Goldwater.

If I recall something like 30% of AA voters voted for Richard Nixon in 1960. Just 6% voted for Goldwater. He pretty much ended AA loyalty to the Republican Party, although it had been slipping since the 1930s.

[Rippounet]

I'm collecting quotes these days, and David Graeber had this interesting one from Lincoln:
"Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." (1861)

Maybe it's relevant to the question, maybe not...

[OldGimletEye]

5 hours ago, Mladen said:

snip

The Republican Party started out as the progressive party. Many of its progressives were central Europeans that fled Europe because of the failed revolutions in Europe around 1848. By the end of the 19th Century, the Republican Party had been captured by big money interest and it would remain that way until the Great Depression, which allowed FDR to cobble a coalition of union workers, immigrants, AA voters, unemployed workers, and the South, the same people, who would oppose FDR's successor LBJ. Pretty much everyone was pissed off at the Republicans and Herbert Hoover's ineffective response.

In the 1920s, most AA voters were reliably Republican voters. That started to end in the 1930s. Then come Truman, LBJ, and Goldwater. The Democratic South, courted by Republicans, starts to flip. The process doesn't complete until about the early 1990s as even in the 1980s there were still some old style southern Democrats around, like Larry McDonald, the head of the John Birch society.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

21 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

If I recall something like 30% of AA voters voted for Richard Nixon in 1960. Just 6% voted for Goldwater. He pretty much ended AA loyalty to the Republican Party, although it had been slipping since the 1930s.

Or let's maybe just cut the bullshit.

 

Quote

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

Clip.

I'd say that's what happened to the party of Lincoln. Because the above came straight from the mouth of the chair of the RNC. 
 

[OldGimletEye]

26 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Or let's maybe just cut the bullshit.

I don't deny the effect of dog whistle politics. But, I think there is pretty strong argument that Goldwater set the Republican Party down the path of being the new party of the South. Or at least he rapidly completed the process. He pretty much single handily vaporized AA support for the Republican Party and then showed the Republican Party how the south could be won.

Recognizing his candidacy as a major turning point isn't "bulllshit."  As should know, Atwater came after Goldwater back when the South was solidly Democrat. In fact if Goldwater had not happened Atwater might have been your typical Southern Democrat, rather than turning Republican, assuming of course there had been a more moderate Republican that supported Civil Rights and back in those days a few of those Republicans did exist.

And the change in the Republican Party didn't just happen in the 1980s.  Atwater didn't just appear out of the blue.  He was the result of changes that I'd argue started in the 1930s and completed in the 1990s.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

22 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

I don't deny the effect of dog whistle politics. But, I think there is pretty strong argument that Goldwater set the Republican Party down the path of being the new party of the South. Or at least he rapidly completed the process. He pretty much single handily vaporized AA support for the Republican Party and then showed the Republican Party how the south could be won.

Recognizing his candidacy as a major turning point isn't "bulllshit."  As should know, Atwater came after Goldwater back when the South was solidly Democrat. In fact if Goldwater had not happened Atwater might have been your typical Southern Democrat, rather than turning Republican, assuming of course there had been a more moderate Republican that supported Civil Rights and back in those days a few of those Republicans did exist.

And the change in the Republican Party didn't just happen in the 1980s.  Atwater didn't just appear out of the blue.  He was the result of changes that I'd argue started in the 1930s and completed in the 1990s. In the 1920s you had people like Calvin Coolidge. In the 1980s you had people like Lee Atwater.

Well, this is where I'm going to cast: Summon @DMC, because I'm not sure.

Goldwater did a great deal to shift his party's views, but I think Johnson played a larger role in the overall process, and he knew what the consequences of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Acts would do.

My opinion is that Atwater jumped everything into high gear with his use and widespread promotion of dog whistle politics though. And Frank Luntz then took it further.

Both would make Goebbels proud. I hate that he and I share a name, but he would probably hate it even more than me, which makes it all the more hilarious. 

[OldGimletEye]

23 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Well, this is where I'm going to cast: Summon @DMC, because I'm not sure.

Goldwater did a great deal to shift his party's views, but I think Johnson played a larger role in the overall process, and he knew what the consequences of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Acts would do.

My opinion is that Atwater jumped everything into high gear with his use and widespread promotion of dog whistle politics though. And Frank Luntz then took it further.

Both would make Goebbels proud. I hate that he and I share a name, but he would probably hate it even more than me, which makes it all the more hilarious. 

Atwater did most of his work in the 1980s, as nasty, unethical and uncouth as it was, long after the transition already began.

Goldwater represented the most conservative elements of the Republican Party. Had a more moderate Republican won the Republican candidacy, one generally supportive of Civil Rights, the Republicans might have not flipped six deep south states. But, Goldwater was steadfastly opposed to a federal civil rights bill, making a stark contrast between himself and LBJ. The deep south got the memo. And so did AA voters. With AA voters fleeing from the Republican Party, the Republican Party had little incentive to try moderate itself with regard to Civil Rights. Goldwater turned the Republican Party from one that had a sizable block of AA voters to one that was pretty much an all white party that didn't even to bother to pretend to be concerned with AA interest.

 

[DMC]

14 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Well, this is where I'm going to cast: Summon @DMC, because I'm not sure.

I'm not a historian, and I really didn't wanna get involved with this question and argument.  And I'm pretty drunk.  From what I can tell, this is an argument about Goldwater's influence, yes?  It was the start of the shift, but so was LBJ's own shift that surprised Mansfield and countless other southern Dems.  I think Goldwater's impact gets overrated these days though.  LBJ kicked the shit out of him.  With the Daisy ad and all.  Goldwater started something, but it took Reagan to realize how to..realize it.  And that was 16 years later.  In between there was a lot more justification and clarification among conservative thinkers like Buckley telling the John Birch Society their views were not welcome.  Those were different days, obviously, which is why I don't really get the point of all this.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 minute ago, DMC said:

I'm not a historian, and I really didn't wanna get involved with this question and argument.  And I'm pretty drunk.  From what I can tell, this is an argument about Goldwater's influence, yes?  It was the start of the shift, but so was LBJ's own shift that surprised Mansfield and countless other southern Dems.  I think Goldwater's impact gets overrated these days though.  LBJ kicked the shit out of him.  With the Daisy ad and all.  Goldwater started something, but it took Reagan to realize how to..realize it.  And that was 16 years later.  In between there was a lot more justification and clarification among conservative thinkers like Buckley telling the John Birch Society their views were not welcome.  Those were different days, obviously, which is why I don't really get the point of all this.

Well I've been misbehaving too. Like I said, the kief is a lot stronger than weed.

And what did Jayne Mansfield ever do to you? Did you see her breasts and think you were looking into the sun?
 

[DMC]

12 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

And what did Jayne Mansfield ever do to you? 

I wouldn't say he was my closest friend, but my first semester at AU one of my good friends had the surname Mansfield.  His family was insanely rich, and from Georgia.  He claimed there was no relation.  I kept in touch with him for years because he was one of the smartest people I ever met.  Last time I saw him right before he transferred he gave me a going away gift.  It was the Criterion Collection version of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

[Rippounet]

7 hours ago, Mladen said:

I know I am asking probably too much, so recommendations on books, documentaries etc are most welcome.

Since no one has actually answered this, I'd nominate Invisible Hands by Kim Phillips-Fein and Dog Whistle Politics by Ian Haney López, because both of them are two of my more recent reads (there's a bazillion books I could recommend, but these are the two that I have nearby rn)
The two are nicely complementary: Invisible Hands explains how corporate interests came to dominate the Republican Party and conservative organizations while Dog Whistle Politics explains how dogwhistles fueled racism and neo-liberalism.
I think you really need to look at both trends (at least) to get a -somewhat- complete picture of the evolution of the Republican Party.
What would be nice imho would be a third book on the deeper evolutions within American society on the level of political philosophy, i.e. how the US has come to focus on negative liberty. Perhaps Mary Anne Franks The Cult of the Constitution for example...

Edit: or you can... just watch these people talk on youtube, we're in 2020 after all.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

8 minutes ago, DMC said:

I wouldn't say he was my closest friend, but my first semester at AU one of my good friends had the surname Mansfield.  His family was insanely rich, and from Georgia.  He claimed there was no relation.  I kept in touch with him for years because he was one of the smartest people I ever met.  Last time I saw him right before he transferred he gave me a going away gift.  It was the Criterion Collection version of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Sorry, the reference is lost on me.

But on T.V. there are cops on the roof shooting something into the crowds. 

[DMC]

4 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Sorry, the reference is lost on me.

Mike Mansfield was the a Senator from Georgia that was the Majority Leader during LBJ's tenure, and beyond.  He was also a very close ally to LBJ, if not a mentor.

14 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Since no one has actually answered this

Yeah there's a lot of lit on dog whistling.  Try to remember to contribute myself tomorrow.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

We are seeing the "Know Nothing Party" of the 1830s-1840s in power on the National Level.  Our President is a "Know Nothing".  They are proud to be "Know Nothings".  I never believed I'd see this in my lifetime.  

He's making his push to keep power.

[OldGimletEye]

14 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Well, this is where I'm going to cast: Summon @DMC, because I'm not sure.

Goldwater did a great deal to shift his party's views, but I think Johnson played a larger role in the overall process, and he knew what the consequences of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Acts would do.

My opinion is that Atwater jumped everything into high gear with his use and widespread promotion of dog whistle politics though. And Frank Luntz then took it further.

Both would make Goebbels proud. I hate that he and I share a name, but he would probably hate it even more than me, which makes it all the more hilarious. 

Well lets be clear about  one thing. The realignment of the parties and the switch of AA voters from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party did not start in the 1980s. It was process that took about six decades to complete. It started roughly around the late 1920s and completed somewhere in the early 1990s.

I mean lets not be like 45 year old white guys that listen to Glenn Beck and then are surprised to hear that AA voters used to vote Republican and think they are going to "own the libs" with that information.